On The Backs Of Women: Former Hobby Lobby Employee Gives Insider’s Look At How The Retail Giant Treats Women

By Hannah Matis – So I worked for Hobby Lobby for about eight months, when I was finishing my PhD and was no longer stipended and needed the cash to get by. I worked on a deeply part-time basis, primarily in the frame shop of a big store here in South Bend, Indiana.

Hobby Lobby began as a frame shop back in the day and so, for reasons of personal history, the overall quality of work and materials is higher there than on average throughout the rest of the store. I was/am deeply grateful for the work and I’m proud of a lot of the work I (and my fellow employees) did there, from Dali to antique Japanese prints to one glorious night when an elderly woman and I matted and set her lovely silkscreen prints, one of which she was sending, bless her, to the White House.

That said. I have a few observations based on my personal experience of, admittedly, one store with a few personal peculiarities of its own, not the responsibility of the corporation at large. To be short and to the point, Hobby Lobby exists and thrives and makes scads of money on the backs of women, both as customers and as employees. It sells (mostly) second-rate craft supplies and crap imported from sweatshops in China to, mostly, lower-middle and lower-class customers: its rise has paralleled the sliding downward of the American middle-class.

To be short and to the point, Hobby Lobby exists and thrives and makes scads of money on the backs of women, both as customers and as employees.

Its customer base is loyal partly because of Hobby Lobby’s ideological choices, although I personally wonder what Christ would have to say to his name plastered all over cheap wooden plaques made in God knows what kind of third-world working conditions. I can’t speak for the personal faith of its CEOs, but as long as religious jargon continues to make Hobby Lobby a ton of money I continue to be suspicious of how genuine it is. In the meantime, it makes money off, for example, exploited teachers and preschool teachers who already spend enormous sums of their own money on their students.

If you shop there you should know: those stores are cleaned and put in order by the same people who bag and check out your purchases. After the store closes those people stay, pretty much at the command of the manager, until he decides to let them go. Do you know how long it takes to put in order an entire aisle’s worth of origami paper after toddlers have spent a joyous day sacking the place??? Or Christmas ornaments (I have flashbacks to the Christmas ornaments…)??? Closing time can be as late as midnight, never mind when the employees got there during the afternoon. To hell, I might add, with the *employees’ families* in the meantime. The one manager who routinely let us go at a decent hour was a single mother, go figure.

In my frameshop the only full-time employees (the ones with the much-lauded benefits and quality of life) were male.

Now overwhelmingly the senior management is male. In my frameshop, the only full-time employees (the ones with the much-lauded benefits and quality of life) were male. EVERYONE ELSE, the people who take up the slack, working 39 hours with no benefits or job security whatsoever, were primarily women: old women hauling incredibly heavy loads shifting furniture, middle-aged women juggling three jobs, and young twenty year olds. Many of them don’t know anything different; the patriarchal atmosphere of the place is the air they normally breathe. (I was the only Obama sticker in the parking lot after 9 PM, shocker.)

All that to say that the fact that it was Hobby Lobby who lodged this suit did not surprise me in the least. I am personally outraged by the decision, although I know that most of Hobby Lobby’s female workers probably share in the corporation’s moral code and so it *feels* less oppressive to them than it did to me, and they might even agree with it. Fine. But for Hobby Lobby to take some – ANY – sort of moral high ground in all this leaves me remembering certain lines of Christ about tithing one’s dill and one’s cumin and neglecting little things like justice and mercy.

4 Responses

I totally agree with the writer. As a 3 year former employee she was correct in saying that you are at the mercy of your uncaring male management and work late nights even if you were scheduled till 9pm you would be forced to stay until midnight. There are many older females expected to carry heavy baskets of merchandise up a 12 foot ladder to place backstock on top cap. Very dangerous to employee and possibly customer near by. They have safety videos we are required to watch but do not adhere to them. The SM (usually white males) I have worked with 3 and they all fit that criteria are lazy but yell…yes i said yell…at their employees to get a project done in an unreasonable time frame while still being cashiers and floor support. No wonder why the customer experience is lacking when they are pushed so hard to finish projects while constantly being questioned by customers to find an item. GET some signage for at least the Departments or aisles numbers to help the customer because we employees surely don’t have the time. Hobby Lobby needs to be more diverse and treat your good employees with respect!

An essay by Alice Walker, “Art for Everyday Use,” contrasts an uneducated sister who lives at home with her mother to her more sophisticated sister who has gone to college and left the rural environment. The sister who lives at home uses a hand crafted quilt as a comforter on the bed. The other sister is incredulous at the use of Art treated so casually. She believes it should be displayed in a frame on the wall. The story was the precursor to Walker’s collection of Essays, “In Search of our Mother’s Gardens” where Walker argues that one of the reasons art museums collection’s are overwhelming white and male is that the art of many women (particularly WOC) was by necessity their gardens, their kitchens, and their sewing.

Reading the essay by a Ph.D student who worked at a Hobby Lobby, part time, for less than a year made of think of the Educated Sister in the Walker Essay. While I’m not in favor of the SCOTUS ruling, this essay is out of touch with the lives with the customer base of Hobby Lobby. I think its arrogant tone, “it sells (mostly) second-rate craft supplies and crap imported from sweatshops in China to, mostly, lower-middle and lower-class customers” is one of the things that turn working class people off from liberal politics. They don’t see progressives as their allies, they see them as elitists who don’t get or value their experiences.

That said. I have a few observations based on my personal experience of, admittedly, one store with a few personal peculiarities of its own, not the responsibility of the corporation at large. http://tr.im/5ntlz